Cemetery back from brink

In the 'Burbs

Moving among the headstones, Peggy Moser sounds less like an amateur historian than a real estate agent selling the merits of a neighborhood to a couple of prospective buyers.

"We have seven lawyers," she notes, pausing near a stone on which the letters "Esq." have long been in retreat under the whiplash of rain, freeze and thaw. "We have three or four ministers and three or four doctors."

Good neighbors, in other words, here in Horner's Cemetery, Northampton County's oldest. And the location is irresistible: an acre in East Allen Township, set between a cornfield and a patch of woods off Route 329, with a little country church nearby.

Be warned. It's a fixer-upper. The first burial was in 1745. The last was in 1913, and despite its inestimable historic value,

Horner's had fallen into neglect. The caretaker injured his back a couple of years ago and could no longer work. Brush overwhelmed the yard and groundhogs undermined it. The four stone walls crumbled. Headstones toppled.

"It was the land of the lost," says the Rev. Rodney Keister of God's Missionary Church, who ministers to his congregation in the 1813 building where most of the dead worshiped in life. It was a Presbyterian church in those days, the third structure to serve a congregation founded in 1731.

To Moser, who grew up near the cemetery, its condition was an insult to the memory of the first permanent settlers in what is now Northampton County -- Scotch-Irish pioneers who arrived in 1728 and endured the usual settlers' lot of privation and Indian raids as their roots took hold. "They were here 13 years before the Moravians," she says, "but you don't hear anything about them. We'd like to change that."

The cemetery has come a long way since Moser and a loose-knit group of volunteers -- including laborers enlisted through Northampton County's adult probation office -- began work in June. The grass is neatly trimmed. Stones have been patched and raised. Visitors can now walk unimpeded and meet the residents: James King, the first to be buried; Jane Horner, killed by Indians in a 1763 raid that claimed 19 other lives; Gen. Robert Brown, a friend of George Washington.

Untold others lie here. The Presbyterians embraced the ashes-to-ashes ethos to such a degree that some eschewed cemetery markers as pointless vanity. Others were buried under small boulders crudely etched with initials and a date of death. So while parts of the cemetery look ready to accept more dead, Moser says it is full.

The restoration work thus far has been volunteer-driven and relatively inexpensive. But a couple of big-ticket items remain before the cemetery is ready to welcome the public. The front wall near the gate was shattered when someone crashed a four-wheeler into it. And a tall, dead tree leans over the east wall, ready to fall.

There's no obvious recourse for help. The cemetery is deeded to the Allen Township Presbyterian Church, which was founded when East Allen was part of Allen Township and, in any case, no longer exists.

"It's a true community project, because there is no owner," says Moser, who hopes donors will provide enough money -- or enough free labor -- to restore luster to this most exclusive neighborhood.